I am taking a break from my sailplane build to travel to Vietnam for a month (This is my 6th trip there) but before I go I'll lay up a Rodent wing (Don Ayers 1.4/7 section) that I will mate to a fuselage being kindly donated by kdt. Hope to lay it up tomorrow (Monday) night as we are leaving on Thursday. Looking forward to all the great chow, people and places in Vn.

I'll be flying this Rodent at the John Higgins Tribute and Fun Fly this spring. The cores are cut and I picked up some 11oz./sq/foot carbon uni that I'll use with some 'glass and Kevlar.

I'm thinking of taking a small sloper with me on this trip as there are numerous excellent flying sites in Vn., I've got a gun case for transport if I do take a glider.

T.D.

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Yesterday I finished the templates and last night I stayed up late and cut the cores. I was lucky that I could get away with equal length panels for this wing (panels 1 & 2 one length then panels 3 to 5 one length) as it cuts the work down significantly. Decided to re-cut one of the second section panels so the photo shows one uncut foam blank. Too tired to do it right now though.

I used Hi-Load60 for panels 1 to 3 and SM for 4 and 5 to help keep the tips lite.

T.D.

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The past couple of weeks I've been thinking about increasing the wing span on my new glider, so after few days of to and fro it's now settled at 3.5 metres with five tapers per semi span instead of four.

I need at least 8.4% thickness for the spar and joiner rod I want to use so I'm using a highbrid AG-40 mod which should track the AG-40 performance quite nicely at the new thickness.

I've decided to cut the cores myself so tonight I'll start the templates.

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I have my new planform finalized and 3 of the 5 new airfoils ready, with luck will find time this weekend to finish the other 2.

This version has a bit more span, area and A/R and sweeps. A friend of mine who owns a CNC foam cutter has offered to cut the cores for me so even though I believe my drop cutter/template cut cores are the equal of any CNC cut cores I have yet seen (except at the leading edge) I am going to take him up on his generous offer.

Looking forward to getting started on this project.

T.D.

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After having a close look at the JW-AG root airfoil I've decided to use a series of these modified airfoils across the wing. These sections will be a bit thicker than the AG airfoils but will have slightly less camber with different thickness and camber locations.

Forgot to mention that I am also increasing the span slightly to 3.12 metres.

Starting on station 2 tonight and hope to have them mostly done by the weekend.

I like two piece wings with beefy joiners but the AG-40 series of sections are so thin it's hard to get that done.

I was going to make a 12mm thick moulded hollow carbon joiner for this new plane but I have a 14.3mm (about 9/16") thick round T-7075 rod bent at 6 degrees which will be perfect.

To make it work I needed a bit more thickness at the root of the wing, so 8.25% instead of 8%.

I've been wanting to try the Joe Wurts JW section for a while now so I made a hybrid root airfoil using the AG40D and the JW09 at 8.25% with a few twiddles and tweaks. This new section gives just enough thickness to take the O.D. carbon receiver tube I laid up over the wing rod while maintaining the high performance and familial characteristics of the AG40 to 43 series.

I could have just thickened the AG40D to 8.25% and been done with it but where's the fun in that?

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This week I started work on my new thermal duration ship for the 2011 Spring season, I'm going to call it 'Wo Fat' because I am hoping it will be very good at getting out of tight spots. It is also a very odd looking bit of kit so the name definitely fits.

Lately I've been building large gliders in the 3.5 to 4 metre range but this time I'm going back to 3 metres, I like the way the smaller sailplanes handle and IMO they are a bit more of a challenge to fly. Started out using the Quabeck 3/8.5 series airfoils but after cutting a set of cores and starting prep on them I decided to put them on the shelf and go with a Joe Wurts JW-09 / Drela AG series hybrid wing.

I've begun the glider design, got the planform roughed out and tweaked a bit and the templates cut, I'll start cutting cores within the next few days. Here are a few photo's of some of the wing work. Target weight is 1420 grams (about 50oz.).